Saint Tikhon’s Monastery
September 8, 2024
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Joyous feast!
“The barren woman bears the Theotokos, the nourisher of our life.”
“Dread wonder: she who sustains our life, who received within her body the Bread of heaven, feeds at her mother’s breast.”
“O marvelous wonder! The fount of life is born of a barren woman, and grace begins gloriously to bear its fruit.”
Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the Life of the world, the Life of all, Life pre-eternal and everlasting, was born of a woman, his most pure and ever-virgin Mother Mary. Thus, she, the most holy Theotokos, is the very source, fountain, and wellspring of Life. She is the life-bearing spring, the inexhaustible chalice, the cloud that lets drop the Dew of grace. She is the raincloud bearing the Rain of mercy; she is the river from which flows the Ocean of divine Love.
The most holy Theotokos is also the nourisher and sustainer of our life. By nourishing at her virgin breast the Life of all, by sustaining his mortal life with sacrifice of her body’s own nutrients, the Ever-virgin becomes in turn a sustainer of our life.
Her Son is the founder of our mortal life and the basis for our participation in life everlasting; she is therefore the gateway and mediatrix of life, the Lady who delivers and gives Life unto us.
Thus, the holy hymnographer is right to notice today a paradox: this supremely fecund soil that gives rise to the Life of all is today born of a barren woman, the fruit of a sterile womb. The nourisher of Life is nourished by an aged mother.
But we realize that, in accordance with God’s ageless plan, the womb of St. Anna was not the cause of the Theotokos’s birth: rather, it was for the sake of the Theotokos that St. Anna’s barrenness was taken away. It is for her sake that we call out to St. Joachim in song: “There is no father in mankind like unto thee.”
St. Gregory Palamas, preaching on the glories of our Ever-virgin Lady, speaks of God’s great work in history, his cultivation of a holy lineage of Old Testament saints, leading to Sts. Joachim and Anna and culminating in the most holy Theotokos. But this holy lineage is not the cause of the Theotokos; she is not the consequence of the holiness up to that point.
Rather, God—as St. Gregory says—made all of creation for the sake of her. He tended and pruned a righteous bloodline for the sake of her. He designated holy parents for her. But her greatness and holiness far surpasses that of her ancestors: she is the glory of her people, indeed, of the whole human race.
But her holiness and greatness is not her own: rather, she is holy and great precisely insofar as she gives herself entirely to God. Her “Let it be” becomes a life-giving “yes” because of the Word incarnate of her; she is the spring cloven in the hard, dry, and rocky ground of fallen humanity, but her Son is the Water of eternal life, slaking our thirst for holiness and eternity.
As we sang in the final verse at the Praises last night: “This is the day of the Lord: rejoice, ye people. For lo, the Bridal Chamber of the Light, the Book of the Word of Life, has come forth from the womb, and the East Gate, newly born, awaits the entrance of the Great Priest. She alone brings into the world the one and only Christ, for the salvation of our souls.”
She is the temple of the Almighty, the house of God, the Church’s “yes” to our Bridegroom’s proposal. She is the salvation of the world, its Savioress—the Kosmosoteira, as the Byzantines called her—as the one from whom Salvation comes. We recall the words of the holy prophet Ezekiel: “The glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord.”
In the same way that her Son’s glory has become her glory, her glory—which is yet her Son’s glory—has become the glory of her mother and father. The Theotokos is renowned because she is the Mother of God; St. Anna is renowned as the mother of the God-bearer, and, thus, as the grandmother of God.
In the same way that the Mother of God was the cause of the world’s creation, the reason that Adam was formed in the beginning, so her glory becomes the cause of her forbears’ glory. The glory of the Theotokos, which redounds upon her parents, ultimately redounds upon all her ancestors, back to Adam and Eve, and thus to the whole human race. The Theotokos is the gate and perfect temple, and yet all creation is called to be a temple. She is the unique gate, but Christ wishes to fill his whole Body, his whole Church, his whole people, all the work of the hands, with his glory. “Ye are the temple of God,” as St. Paul told his Corinthian converts.
Therefore, today, let us approach the Mother of God as a newborn infant in her mother’s arms, and let us celebrate her already as the cause of the world’s redemption, the gateway of God, the source of life, and the one through whom we know our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Acknowledging her as the door and house of the Glory of God, let us imitate her devotion, her prayer, her purity, her single-heartedness, her love of the Lord, so that we, through her prayers, together with the prayers of her holy mother and father, might become suitable temples for the Glory of the Father, Christ himself, to whom is due all adoration, now and throughout the endless ages. Amen.
Most holy Theotokos, save us!